Introduction to Special Issue: Interrogating the Void: Lacanian Psychoanalysis in International Relations
Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: Since the late 1980s, international relation (IR) scholarship has been experiencing an interdisciplinary opening and expansion, entailing both the incorporation of non-traditional/post-positivist approaches, and expanding the subject matter of the discipline. IR scholars have found inspirations in particular in French or more broadly contemporary continental philosophy. IR, therefore, is no stranger to the importance and effects of language and discourse, practice and social construction, the workings of emotions and affect, and/or the need to rethink the discipline’s Eurocentric and racist origins. It is therefore surprising that up until recently Lacanian psychoanalysis has remained largely marginalized, perhaps even suppressed, in the various theorizations of IR, that is, both with respect to knowledge production in our discipline and in the analysis of global politics. Why that was the case up until recently we can only speculate. While Lacan’s major contributions to critical thought have been well acknowledged outside of our discipline, IR scholarship has tended to engage with Derrida, Foucault, Butler, and Deleuze, among others, while ignoring Lacan’s contribution. That is perhaps even more surprising as the above mentioned thinkers, all pivotal for the development of critical IR, have developed their work in relation to or as a response to Lacan’s work. The void of Lacan in IR theory is further surprising given the irrationality of contemporary global politics and the numerous and complex challenges we face. Whether we address the climate catastrophe, the rekindling of empire, the reemergence of racism and nationalist-populism, in/security, or the lingering effects of the 2008 financial crisis, to simply name a few, it is clear that we require new tools for analysis. Indeed, we require new theorization of the subject and its relationship to the object as well as rethinking ontological questions underpinning the international, or the possibility of change and emancipation. This special issue addresses directly the “void of Lacan in IR”. We rely on early pioneering psychoanalytical work in the discipline, such as Edkins’ (2000, 2003) analyses of trauma and memory, and the theory of the political subject, or Kapoor’s (2005, 2008) analyses of capitalism, development and aid. We also draw on recent Lacanian interventions in various sub-fields such as foreign policy, sovereignty and nationalism, in/security, racism, anxiety, and more (e.g., Arfi 2010; Epstein 2010; Solomon 2015; Zevnik 2016; Burgess 2017; Eberle 2017; Kinnvall 2018; Mandelbaum 2020). In doing so, we point to the utility and contribution of Lacanian psychoanalysis. The raison d'être of this special issue is to demonstrate what Lacanian theory can do for the advancement of conceptual frameworks, understanding of global phenomena, and IR knowledge production. Our aim, however, is not to offer a “Lacanian way” to interpret IR. Lacanian psychoanalysis is not merely a perspective, or a lens. Rather, we suggest that the Lacanian framework offers a different set of methodological tools and a distinct theoretical framework, which moves the debate beyond the analysis of discourse, power relations, or political behaviour. More specifically, we argue that, first, the Lacanian framework can help us understand better how political subjects are constituted and hailed, and how affect and emotions are critical in various political projects, thus contributing to ongoing critical IR theorization on, for instance, identity and bordering, affective belonging, memory, ontological security, and biopolitics. This means taking the ontology of void at both the subjective and objective levels as our starting points, thus offering a critical analysis of how affective structures are able to interpellate or develop the compulsion to repeat. We maintain, therefore, that the Lacanian framework opens a new way of engaging with the epistemology of knowledge in and about the discipline, while offering a different way of conceiving ontology and conducting analysis. The Lacanian focus on “how questions” can further strengthen critical IR theorization by interrogating the ways in which subjects, objects, structures, and practices are constituted and performed. Moreover, the Lacanian starting point regarding “void” and “lack” suggests that Lacanian thought is not simply non-foundational. Instead, what Lacanian psychoanalysis uncovers and analyses are the techniques, narratives, logics, and linguistic practices of subjects (be they states, individuals, organizations, and so on), which aim to cover or fill in this constitutive (ontological) lack. Second, we point to the various Lacanian mechanisms that explain the appeal of certain socio-political structures, despite and perhaps because of their irrationality. As such, the contributions to this special issue utilize and apply the Lacanian architecture of desire and enjoyment, the workings of fantasy, how disavowal operates, or Lacan’s four discourses in a multitude of issues and phenomena such as neoliberal logic and the fantasy of the free market, racism and nationalism, sovereignty and borders, bio politics, in/security, climate change, or queer IR theory. Third, Lacanian psychoanalysis’ entails a profound ethical stance, as it provides us with a strong emancipatory politics. As some of our contributors point out, applying a Lacanian architecture forces us to face the ontological void at the heart of our existence, accept the anxiety and neurosis that befall all subjects and objects, and consequently attempt to traverse the fantasy. This further implies that the application of Lacanian psychoanalysis entails the need to unpack the ethical and political implications of contemporary socio-political and legal–economic structures, while offering a route to emancipation without the introduction of a new fantasy, or indeed a new master. This special issue has eight contributions. It opens with the contribution by Catarina Kinnvall and Ted Svensson who offer a critical psychoanalytic reading of the responses to COVID-19 in global politics. They maintain that COVID-19 can be seen as a form of individual and collective trauma that led to the re-emergence of geopolitical bordering. They show how psychoanalytic theorization contributes to the ontological security literature by demonstrating how national-populist fantasies entail border anxieties and a sense of lack leading to the invocation of exclusionary nativist narratives of home. Their piece is thus exemplary of the utility and relevance of Lacanian psychoanalysis to global politics and IR scholarship by engaging critically with the irrationality of the contemporary international, while offering important ethico-political reflections on anxiety, borders, and sovereignty, and the need to come to terms with the privilege of the European knowledge and body. Our second contribution by Andreja Zevnik follows Kinnvall and Svensson’s analysis in that she directly addresses the contemporary phenomenon and discourse around the toppling of statues of the Confederacy and slave traders in Europe and the United States. Focusing on both racists and anti-racists identification politics, Zevnik points to the psychoanalytic mis/identification with those statutes through what she calls anxious politics. In her analysis, she shows how liberal discourses align with racist and white-supremacist fantasies that these statues represent, while also pointing to the ways in which the removal of these statues is re-appropriated by city and state officials as a form of normalization. These practices of normalization work to re-establish the existing power relations, and continue to exclude marginalized voices and subjects. As such, Zevnik’s intervention demonstrates the contribution of Lacanian psychoanalysis to contemporary global politics, as well as offering forms of emancipation and ethico-political interrogation. Jeppe Jacobsen’s contribution follows with a critical unpacking of the contemporary politics of cyberspace and the IR literature on norm promotion and entrepreneurship. He utilizes the Lacanian framework for transformation, that is, the “analyst discourse” and the concept of transgression, as he psychoanalyzes Microsoft’s unsuccessful attempts to prevent the US government from militarizing cyberspace. Jacobsen maintains that Microsoft fails to change US exploitation of (its) software for surveillance and security purposes not because the US public are unaware of the gap between the purported ideals of a free and open cybersafe, and the practices of the US government (surveillance, intelligence gathering, etc.). Rather, Jacobsen argues, Microsoft fails because they do not consider the desire to transgress. As such, he argues that to bring about a more authentic transformation Microsoft need to repress its position as an extremely profitable expert-subject in cyberspace and hystericize the norm violator. Taking a critical and Lacanian reading of neoliberalism, Henry Maher’s puzzle focuses on the enduring and affective appeal of neoliberal thinking and policies. Maher argues that critiques of neoliberalism who utilize the governmentality and biopolitical Foucauldian frameworks ignore the affective power of neoliberal ideology and tend to essentialize the state. Moreover, Maher analyses the writing of Milton Friedman and the so-called Chicago School, as well as the G-20 responses to the 2008 financial crisis through the Lacanian framework of fantasy. He demonstrates how the idea of the “free market” operates as a fantasy, namely as a narrative that both promises the wholeness and prosperity of the “free market”, while including an in-built mechanism to explain its failure, that is, the transgressive state. This way, the neoliberal fantasy is able to endure and appeal due to its structural affective and enjoyment qualities. Finally, Maher takes an ethico-political stance by pointing to the need to traverse the fantasy, acknowledging the ontological void as well as the impossibility or/and damage that the “free market” ideal entails. Valeria Tolis develops a Lacanian discourse analysis (LDA) in order to analyse the structure–agent problematique, while applying her LDA to energy efficiency policy in the EU. Tolis argues that the Lacanian discourse operates as the “historically determined socio-linguistic structure”, sustained by the speaking subject. Nonetheless, the Lacanian speaking subject is always a split subject, producing excess meaning and striving to fill in an ontological gap. Therefore, discourse/structure always involves a certain gap, fracture, allowing for change, indeed even a paradigm shift. As such, Tolis’ Lacanian framework contributes directly to the IR literature on the dialectics between structure and agent, the possibility of change, and the analysis on EU energy and climate policy. Moran Mandelbaum continues with a Lacanian intervention in poststructuralist IR. He points to the often used and yet under-theorized concept of interpellation/hailing in various sub-fields such as studies on identity, memory and commemoration, critical security studies, militarization, and more. Mandelbaum argues that in poststructuralist IR interpellation usually remains at the level of representation, while the ontological gap, the remainder/failure, in every process of interpellation remains under-explored. He then puts forth a Lacanian framework that centres around the concepts of void, desire, fantasy, and enjoyment to show the desire to, and the im/possibility of, belonging in global politics. To illustrate the relevance and utility of the Lacanian architecture, Mandelbaum looks into the Brexit vote in the UK in 2016, and the operations of homonationalist fantasmatic narratives in Israeli society and political discourses. Luis Artur Costa do Valle follows Mandelbaum’s and Tolis’ Lacanian unpacking of IR theory, as he offers a critical psychoanalytical intervention in queer studies in IR. While relying on and acknowledging the important contributions of Cynthia Weber and others to queer IR, do Valle argues that Queer IR tends to collapse queerness into identity and falls into the trap of binary thinking: queer/straight. To avoid this binary trap do Valle offers a sophisticated Freudian–Lacanian framework to both critically analyse and offer a way out of this binary and essentializing thinking about queerness. Key concepts he develops and applies include Lacan’s “mirror stage”, “ego-ideal”, and pure desire. As such, do Valle demonstrates the relevance of psychoanalysis to contemporary debates in IR as a critical–analytical tool and as ethics. Peter J. Burgess’ contribution concludes our special issue with a revisited psychoanalytical reading of biopolitics, from the works of Foucault and Agamben to the applications of biopolitics in IR. Burgess draws on Eric Laurent’s framework of “Lacanian biopolitics”, while taking a different path and offering a “meeting place” between the being, the body, and language in what Lacan calls the parlêtre—[…] “speaking-being” and “being-speaking”. Burgess then applies this psychoanalytical framework of biopolitics to the COVID-19 pandemic. In doing so, he shows how the COVID-19 pandemic is a manifestation of the being of human beings, where political responses to the pandemic were not about different configurations of the political, but about the way in which humans exists in the world. In other words, the COVID-19 pandemic was not about the biopolitical management of the society, but about human beings’ search of a cure.
Source: International Studies Quarterly
DOI: 10.1093/isq/sqad062
Authors: Andreja Zevnik, Moran M Mandelbaum
Institutions: University of Manchester, Keele University
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,956
OpenAlex ID: W4385352240